Leonard Pitts Jr. commentary: Malala, a teenager, is wise and courageous beyond her years

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Friday November 29, 2013 5:27 AM

You may not dance.

You may not listen to music or sing. You may not read. You may not leave the house except under
certain strict conditions. You may not watch movies or television. You may not aspire. You may not
learn.

These are the strictures the Taliban seeks to impose upon women and girls in the places it
infests, including the Swat Valley in Pakistan. And when she spoke against those strictures, when
she gave interviews and wrote a blog asserting her right to learn and to be, Malala Yousafzai made
herself a target of those men, one of whom boarded her school bus last October with a gun and
asked, “Who is Malala?” None of the girls spoke, but a few glanced toward Malala and the gunman had
his answer. He raised his pistol — it was a Colt .45 — and fired three shots. One bullet went
through a girl’s hand. Another ended up in a girl’s right arm. And one went through the socket of
Malala’s left eye.

Have you read her new memoir?
I Am Malala — the answer to the question the terrorist asked — is the story of her life
before, and her miraculous recovery after, that awful event. It is, at one turn, the story of a
girl who is startlingly recognizable, who feuds with her best friend, who wishes she were taller,
who adores the
Twilight movies and the TV show
Ugly Betty. And then at the next turn, it is the story of a girl who is, for most of us,
starkly unrecognizable, growing up in cramped quarters in a poor and mostly rural country where the
customs are unlike ours, and some see the birth of a girl as cause for disappointment.

One hears some ghost of Anne Frank in reading
I Am Malala, the flightiness, effervescence and, well … girlishness of an adolescent girl
flung once again against the indifferent violence of inhuman men, like flowers hurled against a
stone wall.

Did you see Malala last month on
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart? She spoke of learning the Taliban had targeted her for
death. “I said, ‘If he comes, what would you do, Malala? Then I would reply to myself, ‘Malala,
just take a shoe and hit him.’ ” The audience laughed softly, but she wasn’t done. “Then I said, ‘
If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You
must not treat others that much with cruelty and that much harshly. You must fight others, but
through peace and through dialogue and through education.’ ”

“Oy,” breathed Stewart. But Malala was still not finished with her imagined dialogue. “Then,”
she continued, “I (would) tell him how important education is and that, ‘I even want education for
your children, as well.’ And I would tell him, ‘That’s what I want to tell you. Now, do what you
want.’ ”

And Stewart, who gets paid for his snappy comebacks, sat there with both hands to his mouth,
simply stunned. Who could blame him? This child had spoken with a courage and wisdom older than her
16 years. She sounded like Gandhi. She sounded like King.

I have a daughter seven years older than Malala. She’s in school studying for a degree in
English, after which she will pursue a master’s in social work. When she launches her career, she’s
likely to face barriers to advancement common to American women — lower pay, workplace misogyny and
that ceiling of glass through which she will be able to see the next step but be barred from taking
it.

But in this country, no one will shoot her for trying. I am thankful for that.

And not only that. In this week we dedicate to gratitude for God’s blessings, it occurs to me
that one of the most precious of them is courage, that greatness of soul that elevates the human
spirit and, once in a while, against every temptation to smallness, produces a person who is larger
than her very self. Such is the case with this child.